The war room is quiet for the first time in days. Maps, red-inked routes, and scattered reports litter the table, but Isabella barely sees any of it. Her chest is tight, her breath uneven partly from the weight of command, partly from the child curled safely beneath her palm.
The door clicks shut.
She doesn't need to look up to know it's him.
Damian moves like a shadow now, silent, sharper, forged in the fire Alessandro tried to break him with. But when he stops behind her, when his breath brushes her neck, she feels the man she once knew the man she bled for.
"Isabella," he murmurs.
She closes her eyes. His voice is a blade and a balm.
He steps around her, slow, deliberate, as if unsure whether she'll allow him close. When he finally kneels in front of her, she freezes.
"Damian… what are you doing?"
His fingers graze her knee, trembling.
"Something I should have done before they took me," he whispers. "Something I'm not doing as a king… but as your husband."
